Huizhou Energy Investment Company joined the register last week, and is helping the junior to raise around $2.5 million, becoming the largest shareholder with 19.15% of the expanded capital base.

It will exceed current major shareholder Jara Resources, which recently purchased Magnum Hunter's 17% interest.

It means Chinese interests will own around one third of NSE, a company that is now down to a handful of staff and a massive acreage onshore position in the potentially prolific Canning Basin and Carnarvon Basin.

Huizhou has successfully developed exploration and production opportunities around the world, including Africa and Mongolia, and intends to remain interested in New Standard, but it will not fund any future work, rather it will seek to bring in a farminee to fund the eventual drilling.

It is a tall ask, but Thick remains optimistic.

"They use some new technologies, in combination with traditional aero-mag and seismic, and they claim it is different to others, which they have successfully used in order wells they have drilled, and they are bringing it to us," he said.

The company's holdings in the Canning Basin and Merlinleigh Sub-basin are substantial and, particularly in the Canning, are lacking in seismic and aero-mag coverage.

So NSE and Huizhou are planning to cover parts of the Canning leases with the new holographic aeromagnetic photography, which together with past work and existing data should lead to a rationalisation of the company's Canning licences.

"That's what we are doing now, because we clearly do not need 15 million acres in Western Australia. The costs of holding that are high, so we will be handing back part of that over the next month or so, so we can focus on those areas that we jointly consider the most prospective," Thick said.

NSE has two focuses in the Canning: the Laurel Formation, which is reportedly being successfully flow tested by Buru Energy, and the Southern Canning project, which focuses on the Goldwyer Shale, and into which NSE drilled two unsuccessful wells with former partner ConocoPhillips.

The Southern Canning project covers 48,000sq.km targeting a wet gas resource.

The United States Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration estimated the Goldwyer shale contained 764 trillion cubic feet of risked gas in place and 229Tcf of risked recoverable gas - the largest estimate placed on any basin in Australia.

The Laurel play is covered by 5900sq.km in EP 417 and the Seven Lakes blocks.

Thick said both plays have their place.

Buru has helped derisk the Laurel with reports of gas and condensate flowing from the Valhalla North-1 and Asgard-1 wells, while Finder Exploration's Theia-1 well, which intersected a gross 120m of the shale with two zones for 60m with high wet gas mud readings and promising signs for hydrocarbon.

"We can't discount the Goldwyer yet, and there are still parts of it that we find interesting, and we could have an extension of what the Finder guys drilled in EP 456, there is some interesting prospectivity there worth looking at," Thick said.

The other project, two licences in the onshore Carnarvon Basin's Merlinleigh Sub-basin, has again been pushed to the forefront of New Standard's thinking.

It is relatively advanced compared to the Canning Basin, has nearby pipeline access and past gas shows, fewer access issues and shallower targets.

"That will probably become our primary focus, at least initially, because it is the easiest to ramp up," he said.

The Merlinleigh project covers 5500sq.km with the potential for conventional reservoirs and shale/tight gas formations

It is following a tight gas discovery, Kennedy Range-1, which was drilled in 1966.

New Standard had previously planned to drill the Condon prospect, feeling that there was no point in collecting seismic before drilling.

For now, Huizhou has put in working capital, and will support New Standard in a quest to find new advanced prospects around the world, primarily in conventional targets.

The company turned its hand to unconventional production and failed.

It does not want to get locked into the cycle of needing funding to drill multiple production wells again.